Chapter 3 when UNHCR submitted more than 163,200 refugees for resettlement. However, the growth trend in resettlement quotas saw a reversal, with declining global resettlement opportunities in 2017. As a result, UNHCR submitted 75,200 refugees during the year, a 54 per cent drop compared with 2016, leaving a 94 per cent gap between needs and actual resettlement places for the year. Despite the declining trend in resettlement numbers, a growing number of States showed interest in establishing or maintaining resettlement programmes. A total of 35 States accepted UNHCR’s resettlement submissions in 2017, a figure at par with 2016. This was significantly higher than in earlier years, reflecting an overall increased diversity of global resettlement actors, albeit at a lower scale. A total of 83 UNHCR operations referred refugees to resettlement States in 2017. Turkey (17,200 submissions), Lebanon (13,800), and Jordan (8,500) were the top three, driven mainly by the Syrian refugee crisis and accounting for more than half (52 per cent) of all submissions worldwide. Syrians also constituted the largest refugee population to be submitted for resettlement by UNHCR in 2017 (37,300 or 50 per cent of all submissions). They were followed by refugees from the DRC (12,900 submissions) and Myanmar (5,300). Based on official government statistics provided to UNHCR, 102,800 refugees 37 were resettled to third countries during 2017, representing a 46 per cent reduction from the 189,300 admissions reported in 2016. During the 2017 calendar year, 33,400 people were resettled to the United States, a 65 per cent drop compared with 2016 (96,900).38 Other countries that admitted large numbers of resettled refugees during the year included Canada (26,600), Australia (15,100), the United Kingdom (6,200), and Sweden (3,400). 37 This figure includes refugees admitted with or without UNHCR’s assistance. 38 During the US fiscal year 2017, 53,716 people were resettled to the United States. 39 See: http://www.jips.org/en/profiling/durable-solutions. 30 Local Integration Another durable solution for refugees is local integration. This involves a refugee finding a permanent home in the country of asylum and integrating into the local community. Local integration is a complex and gradual process comprising separate but equally important legal, economic, social, and cultural dimensions. Over time the process should lead to permanent residence rights and, in some cases, the acquisition of citizenship in the country of asylum. The objective is for integrated refugees to be able to pursue sustainable livelihoods and contribute to the economic life of the host country, and live among the host population without discrimination or exploitation. However, measuring and quantifying the degree and nature of local integration is challenging given its complexity. A step forward in improving the available data and identifying relevant indicators to support integration analysis is the Durable Solutions Indicator Library and Analysis Guide. These tools are a result of a multi-stakeholder initiative led by the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of IDPs and coordinated by the Joint IDP Profiling Service (JIPS) to create a library of indicators that can be used to measure progress towards durable solutions. The library contains indicators on various topics relevant to integration such as livelihoods, safety and security, and participation. The library also aligns with relevant indicators used to monitor the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, enabling comparative analysis of the situation of displaced populations as part of national Sustainable Development Goal reporting. 39 However, in the absence of agreed indicators, the acquisition of citizenship through naturalization can be used as a proxy for local integration for refugees. Even here, though, the available data on naturalized refugees tend to be uneven and incomplete given that where refugees acquired citizenship through unhcr > Global trends 2017

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